The annoying tug at my brain (which has followed me all the way from home) fades almost out of my awareness as I walk alongside my long lost friend, hearing his tales (spoken in a voice that is rich and deep, aged, as my own, and I find that I rather enjoy the notion that we are now men) with a blend of emotion that I have come to expect from reunions.

He speaks of war, and I feel a twinge of jealousy in my heart that I was not there to witness the army’s victorious return home, or to perhaps have slipped away alongside Erebos and Aithniel, as we had done so many times, to watch the warriors weave among the enemy, their rapiers red with blood.

He tells of the leadership of the land, which I listen to with nominal interest, knowing Thranduil and Hotaru both from my time alongside my dam while she gabbed and flitted about the Basin like a gold laced butterfly. I like the idea of the pretty, rosy mare being our Lady, and what I remember of Thranduil is pleasant enough, albeit less pleasant than thinking of Hotaru’s grace.

And then, he tells me of Arwen, his words answering some of the inquiries that had flooded my mind as I wandered; where were the twins? I had stupidly thought, the pretty, snowy angels who had been there, alongside the lake that day, their little ivory bodies laced in gold and their laughter sweet. Erebos and I had both looked at the girls with enough interest to make Aithniel seethe and fluff her wings.

It hurts to think of beautiful Arwen as dead, that she was murdered makes my stomach clench in tight anger. It feels like someone has pressed a needle into my lungs and that they can’t breathe air right anymore, a single golden eye glancing over to Erebos in communal sorrow, in wonder of how deeply his heart ached if they had truly grown as close as he says.

He seems to gather my thoughts, a good friend, his shoulder brushing against mine in a silent support. A resolve fills me in the embrace, one which reaches down through to my toes: we will avenge her. Perhaps Erebos already plots as much.

It isn’t until Cathun stopped and muttered something from a slight rise in the earth that I am popped out of the sound of Erebos’ stories and propelled into the reality that we are very lost.

I don’t get lost in Helovia, and might have been mad at Cathun (shouted at him, even), if I wasn’t so absorbed in the strangeness of what lay before me; a crimson wood, its heart a thrumming red river that thundered down into a bloody pool. I taste the air with my muzzle, finding the crisp smell of water, a distinct lack of the metallic stench of blood disturbing as much as it is a relief.

Why is the water red?

”Wow,” says Erebos, and I agree; it is so dark and mysterious in there, so delightfully inviting, and while I feel an equal sense of foreboding rise in me (it was not here when I passed through some weeks ago… it reeks of magic, of strangeness), I can’t help but lean over the rise we stand on to peer more closely at the gathering of people around the red water, the backward tilt of my ears the only sign that I feel any discomfort over this situation at all.

I think of the pull at my thoughts, and ponder the horizon as we walked, compare it to the memories of my youth.

”Have you been here before?” he asks as he turns towards me, his eyes all alive with excitement. I shake my head slowly to the right and left, repeat the motion.

"No," I answer, letting my eyes narrow as I think of the plain wood that had been here before, my words swallowed up by Cathun’s more fearful, warning filled ones…

I don’t think it was here before.

The thought makes me shudder; validity is given to the worry that has snuck up on me throughout the morning and afternoon.

Erebos, of course, ignores what Cathun thinks, feeling much of what I do and expressing as much with his roguish wink – it’s the only way to really get to the bottom of it, to explain why a strange (albeit pretty damn amazing) place has just sprung up right where I walked some weeks before. I take a few steps forward, despite the nagging voice in my head that says this is against better judgment.

"Cathun is right. It wasn't here last week, 'least not that I saw," I muse out loud, my tail curling pensively behind me as I look back to the two young men with deviously glinting eyes, already walking down because I’m sure Erebos will come with me, even if Cathun decides to puss out and wait up here, "but it doesn’t look dangerous either."